Practices for Lent that Help us Be with Jesus: Week 3

Solitude: Spending extended time on your own with God away from other people.

Article: 

William Temple said: “Your religion is what you do with your solitude”  What does that mean?

When you don’t have to think of anything, where does your mind go? 

• What do you most like to think about?
• What do you most enjoy daydreaming about?
• What gives you the most comfort to fantasize about?

According to Temple, that’s your God, because your religion is what you do with your solitude.

In some of your cases you’re thinking about a person.  Maybe a romantic figure; somebody that you’re in love with, or would like to be in love with, or you’d like that person to be in love with you.  Maybe you think about your career; what you’re going to do when you’re done with this job, or where you hope to be in ten years.  Maybe you’re thinking about a house; the dream house you’ve always wanted to build/buy and you’re saving up and hoping you can get it one day. 

Do you see what those things are?  Those things are not necessarily bad things, but they can be God substitutes.  In the most functional way, there are certain things (thoughts) that are kind of like sweets.  They’re the things that when we get down we think about them to comfort ourselves (and that can be a form of adoration/worship), and like sweets, thoughts of those things actually suppress our appetites for other things.

So you have to be careful.  

If you want to truly experience God, you’ve got to find whatever it is you’re feeding on that keeps you from being hungry when you sit down to meet with Him.

In life, you’re getting comforted by many things.  Watch out for those things.  Enjoy them, but make sure they are not destroying your appetite for God.¹

Helpful Verses: 

But now even more the report about [Jesus] went abroad, and great crowds gathered to hear him and to be healed of their infirmities.  But he would withdraw to desolate places and pray.  Luke 5:16

Be still, and know that I am God.  I will be exalted among the nations,  I will be exalted in the earth!  Psalm 46:10

Search me, O God, and know my heart! Try me and know my thoughts!  And see if there be any grievous way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting.  Psalm 139: 23-24

Interesting Quotes:

“Most of us are more tired than we know at the soul level.  We are teetering on the brink of dangerous exhaustion, and we cannot do anything else until we have gotten some rest...we can't really engage [any spiritual disciplines] until solitude becomes a place of rest for us rather than another place for human striving and hard work.”  Ruth Haley Barton

“Without solitude it is virtually impossible to live a spiritual life.  Solitude begins with a time and place for God, and for him alone.  If we really believe not only that God exists but also that he is actively present in our lives—healing, teaching, and guiding—we need to set aside a time and space to give him our undivided attention.”  Henri Nouwen

“In quiet and silence the faithful soul makes progress, the hidden meanings of the Scriptures become clear, and the eyes weep with devotion every night. Even as one learns to grow still, one draws closer to the Creator and farther from the hurly-burly of the world.”  Thomas à Kempis

Exercises:

1) Find a quiet place at the end of the day and simply recall the events of your day.

2) As you sit quietly, pay attention to your mind and body.  Are you angry  Anxious?  Bitter?  Tired?  Something else? 

3) Allow what your thinking and feeling to inform you of the state of your own heart, then ask yourself why? (Why am I angry, tired, etc.?)

4) Remember that God was with you in every moment of the day, even moments when you weren’t conscious of his presence.

5) Thank God for the good things of the day. 

6) Repent of the ways in which you did not follow Jesus wholeheartedly. 

7) Resolve to live for Jesus tomorrow.

¹ This article is a modified section from Tim Keller’s sermon “The Discipline of Desire, Part Two”.